Moments
by manicmethod
Summary: There are moments in Elsa's life pertaining to her sexuality. Some of them she wishes she could forget. The others, she wouldn't give up for the world. One Shot.


**I wrote this mostly to let you know I'm not dead. Happy reading.**

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I'm seven years old and it's the first time I hear about them. Lesbians. The word rolls of my best friend's tongue like a swear, scandalous, forbidden. It's in some gossip magazine we pretend we're old and sophisticated enough to be reading, as we wait for that cheap glittery nail varnish we'd coated our nails with to dry. She whispered the word, almost like she was afraid her mother would be listening in behind the corner.

"Lesbians," she repeats, breathy.

"What's that?" I ask, almost afraid of the answer.

"Girls who like girls, I think. It seems kind of gross right? My mom says it's uh… un…unat…not right," she struggles out.

"Right," I agree, because I knew it's what she expects. But I dodn't really have an opinion on the whole lesbians thing.

Xxx

It's not until I'm twelve that the topic comes up around me again. My father this time. Flicking through channels on the television in the kitchen one morning, he halts on one of the five-hundred plus generic channels filled with repeats of day time talk shows. They are chatting to a same-sex couple who want to get married, but can't because it's still illegal and wrong.

"Good," he huffs, "bloody fags."

I reel from the hateful slur spilling from my normally placid father's lips, and shift to hide the title of the romance novel I was reading. I continue munching on my Fruit Loops.

Xxx

At thirteen, there are two incidents.

Getting changed for gym class. My best friend stands off to the side, talking to somebody. Ignored, I look across the room, and catch the eye of the new girl. She looks nervous and almost guilty, so I send her a slight smile, and a little wave, and she returns the gesture. Still smiling, the freckles across her cheeks covering a faint blush, she pulls her burning red hair into a ponytail.

"What's her name?" I nudge my friend, "the new girl?"

"Ally? Annie?" Shrugs, her attention still focused on her other conversation. The girl she was talking to cuts in.

"Anna," she says, making a face, "she shouldn't even be allowed to change in here."

"Why?" I frown. I see no reason why this girl would be on the receiving end of such disdain. Surely she hadn't already angered those of higher standing in middle school hierarchy. The girl leans over to me, eyes wide.

"You mean you haven't heard? She's a lesbian. It's gross."

"Oh come off that," my friend says, "we're too young to be thinking of shit like that."

I note how easily the word rolls off tongues now. Swears and lesbians.

Xxx

Six months later, Anna's at my house, after working on a project for school. We're watching a movie she brought over, and eating a pizza my mother ordered especially for us. All the while, the conversation with my best friend and that girl in the changing room lingers in the back of my mind. A million other thoughts ricochet through my head too. What's it like to kiss a girl? Is Anna really a lesbian? Has she ever kissed a girl?

Suddenly my thoughts are interrupted by the scene on the television. Two girls. Kissing. I turn to Anna, and she seems un-phased by it, still watching with the same intense look on her face, the bridge of her nose scrunched up, freckles folding in on themselves. My mother chooses now to walk in to offer us more drinks. She squeaks, and promptly ejects the DVD from the player. She then ejects Anna from the house.

Xxx

I'm sixteen. It's my birthday. My parents, my foolishly trusting parents let me have the house to myself. My friends insisted on a wild teenage party with alcohol and boys.

The music is blaring, sending vibrations through my soul and down into the pit of my stomach. Lights are flashing in front of my eyelids, but I only see impressions of fluorescents as my eyes are shut, and my lips are pressed against somebody's. A boy's. His name is Hans, I think. His lips are hard and chapped; his hand is planted firmly on my chin to keep me in place, and is arousal is obvious by the bulge in his jeans which brushes against me. It's my first kiss, his tongue has travelled so far to the back of my mouth, and I wish it wasn't my first kiss. His stubble is itchy, and I tug on his ridiculous sideburns to get him to pull away. He hisses and releases me.

"Sorry," I say. I'm not. He leaves without a word, and I'm glad of it. I glance curiously around, wondering if my friends will notice if I slip up to my room for the rest of the night, when I catch a flash of bright-red hair. Anna. She's pressed closely against another girl, dancing, having a good time. The other girl leans over and kisses Anna. Her hold on Anna's chin is loose, and both of them have soft, supple looking lips. The boys surrounding them stop and holler and whistle at them, the girls glare in disgust at both the spectacle before them, and the boys in the room.

I merely look on with curiosity, and for a second, a brief flicker, wish I was the one holding the red head close.

Xxx

At eighteen, I'm ready for college. I'm leaving the next day, going across the country because I want to try to escape from all of this. But first there are goodbyes to deal with. First there's Hans. When I try to break up with him, he insists we should at least attempt to keep us going. Distance shouldn't matter, he says. Distance, I think, is exactly what matters. I need it. I don't tell him this.

He gets angry, calls me selfish, a prude. I never put out, or had sex with him. He tells me it was my fault he was unhappy. He only wanted me because I was hot, and unobtainable. I slap him for that, and he leaves.

Before he is totally gone, he mutters to me.

"I know why. Filthy dyke."

Xxx

At twenty, my new college friends have managed to coax me out of the shell I retreated into after Hans. We're at a party, drunk, drinking. Lights are pounding, music flashing. Wait.

A group of us gather in a circle on the floor. There is a bottle on its side in the centre of the ring, surrounded by a mix of boys and girls. I look at them one by one, but most of them blur together in my state. I recognise a few from my classes, and another, much to my surprise, is the hazily familiar face of a freckle-dusted redhead. Annie? Ally?

I'm so focused on her face, I don't notice her spin the bottle, or notice that it stops pointing at me. She looks at me, and suddenly everything around me becomes quiet. Like a blanket has descended and muffled out everything, except her words as she leans across the circle to place a hand on my jaw.

"It's Elsa, right?"

She says it before drawing our mouths together. She's soft; it's the first thing I notice. Tender. She's wearing lip gloss. She brushes my lip with her tongue, and waits for me to let her in. She doesn't shove, or rush me, but once my lips are parted, she's hungry for anything I can give her, anything I want to give her.

It's over all too soon, and as she pulls back, he name escapes in a quiet gasp.

"Anna."

Xxx

It's almost a whole year later, when I'm twenty-one, when I finally muster the courage to ask Anna on a date. I'd spent some time waiting for her after one of he lectures, then chickening out and running before the class let out. I finally managed to stand my ground, and she accepted with all the enthusiasm one could expect from a sunny personality like Anna Berwyn.

We go to an art museum. She bounds from one room to another, breathlessly rambling about the unappreciated beauty of Northern Renaissance paintings. She drops names like Jan van Eyck and Albrecht Dürer, names that mean nothing to me, but I smile at her eagerness, and in relief that she doesn't absolutely hate my idea of a nice date. We go to the connected museum, a museum of science, and we're in my territory.

Afterwards, I walk her back to her dorm room. Before I can depart for the night, she gives me a quick peck on the lips that sends butterflies hurtling against my insides.

Xxx

At twenty-two, I'm in love.

I tell my parents.

They no longer have a daughter.

I no longer have a family.

Xxx

At twenty-five, I'm still in love. I'm so in love it sometimes makes me cry. And when Anna asks what's wrong, I tell her everything's right, nothing's wrong, because I have her. And then she holds me tightly, our naked skin pressed together, and I listen to her heart beating as she entwines our fingers.

Tomorrow I'm going to ask her something.

I hope she says yes.

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**Yeah so lemme know what you think. This is partially to let you know I'm still writing, and also a kind-of celebration of hitting 200 followers on tumblr,** bewareofthefrozenhearts **if you don't know**.** If you spot any mistakes in this, feel free to shoot me, I didn't proofread it properly.**

**Also, a little note for readers of Dogtown; I haven't given up on it. Anyone looking at my tumblr will know it was only really supposed to be on hiatus until the start of June, and I WAS writing it, when my laptop died. And then the charger wouldn't work. So while I'm working on getting a new charger, I can't really do anything on Dogtown, since all my stuff's on my laptop. Sorry.**

**A not to the general fic-reading public; please don't bother fic writers to update. Nobody's bugged me about Dogtown, but you've all scared off awesome writers like Hunhund with it. So yeah, don't give fic writers a hard time.**


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